“Wanted: Dead Or Alive”

That’s the inscription above this graffiti on a wall which once had a mural extolling Saddam Hussein. The $25,000,000 reminds Iraqis of the price on Saddam’s head.
To me, the extraordinary thing about current events in Iraq is the tiny number of people who are engaging in pro-Saddam activity. For a man who ruled Iraq for over thirty years, Saddam apparently had an astonishingly small number of admirers. Terrorist efforts on his behalf are so feeble that most days, they do not succeed in killing a single soldier, even though the many thousands of soldiers who are out in public, engaging in security and rebuilding activities, are all potential targets. American newspapers should be full of this good news: Saddam, who barely three months ago was one of the world’s most entrenched tyrants, now cannot stop Iraqis from painting graffiti that taunts him with a knife through his head. For some reason, though, they aren’t.